Great Opening Round For Tata Steel

The opening round in Wijk Aan Zee provided plenty of thrills and spills as the top GMs engaged in fierce battles.

Nakamura had a dream start against Grischuk, quickly getting a clear advantage out of the opening.  Grischuk tried a piece sacrifice, but it wasn't good enough to save the day.  Nakamura won the daily €500 prize for the best game of the day for his efforts.

Magnus Carlsen tried the Scotch Opening against Lev Aronian and unleashed a new idea with a pawn sacrifice on move twelve.  Aronian responded well, and managed to gain the upper hand in a razor-sharp position.  However, somewhere in the complications his chances for victory faded away.

The shortest win of the day went to Jan Smeets who blew away Alexei Shirov in 25 moves.  Shirov may have had a memory lapse in one of his favourite opening lines, and had to conceded defeat.

A clash of titans: Carlsen and Aronian square off in round one (pic from the official Facebook page)

It looked like Vachier-Lagrave would also get off to a winning start against Wang Hao, but he tragically missed a remarkable queen sacrifice leading to perpetual check for a draw.

Kramnik played strongly with the black pieces to put Nepomniachtchi under pressure, but Nepo recovered sufficiently to hold the draw.

Last year's B Group winner Anish Giri managed to hold a draw in his opening game against compatriot Erwin l'Ami, while the world champion Vishy Anand won when his opponent Ruslan Ponomariov got his Queen trapped deep in enemy territory.

The results from all three groups are below, together with the games from the A Group. The official tournament website with all the games and more information can be found here.